Bankruptcy Court Publishes an Official List of Madoff "Customers"

Former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt estimated the actual net fraud to be between $10 and $17 billion, as this calculation does not include the fictional returns Madoff credited to his customer accounts.

Prosecutors identified $13.2 billion in losses in accounts opened since 1996.

Concerns about Madoff's business had surfaced as early as 1999, when financial analyst-whistleblower Harry Markopolos informed the SEC that he believed it was legally and mathematically impossible to achieve the gains Madoff claimed to deliver. Others contended it was inconceivable that the growing volume of Madoff accounts could be competently and legitimately serviced by his documented accounting/auditing firm, a three-person firm with only one active accountant. Since Madoff's arrest, the SEC has been criticized for its lack of due-diligence, despite having received complaints from Markopolos and others for almost a decade.

HSBC "has emerged as one the largest victims of Bernard Madoff’s alleged fraud with potential exposure of about $1bn...HSBC’s exposure stemmed from loans it provided to institutional clients, mainly hedge funds of funds, that wanted to invest with Mr Madoff. HSBC’s direct exposure is believed to be about $1bn in loans provided to clients who invested some $500m of their own funds in Mr Madoff’s venture. Under the typical terms of these deals, if the US authorities recover any funds from Mr Madoff, HSBC will be paid first, with its clients suffering the first tranche of losses."

All three have at least one thing in common: Their names appear on a list of several thousand clients of disgraced financial wizard Bernard Madoff. The list has been made public in a court filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.